New holiday beats frenzy of shopping
by Bernie Scheffler, editor-in-chief

    Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the final fall semester Collegian. That means one thing—the holidays are here.

   Actually, they’ve been here for quite a while, at least according to retailers. Holiday advertising this year started before Thanksgiving.

   I woke up one morning last month, with an annoying holiday jingle playing in my head, and I realized that I don’t like the holidays anymore.

   At the risk of sounding like a younger, less-wise version of my parents,

   I remember when holiday commercials didn’t start until the day after Thanksgiving. I remember when the commercials were black and white. I remember when we didn’t even have TVs.

   Seriously, though, how much further can we take the commercialization of the holidays? If we keep this up, Thanksgiving, one of our best holidays, is going to disappear completely, sucked into the ever-widening black hole the Christmas retail season has become.

   The advertising push only compounds the anxiety most of us already feel. Christmas shopping is like the sudden-death overtime of shopping. In regular shopping, anything can wait until tomorrow. In Christmas shopping, you cannot wait. You have to score your kid a gift quickly before a couple million other shoppers try to take the last one.

   Maybe those of us who have been fighting the retail idea of Christmas should give up. Let the retailers have it.

   In fact, let’s beat them to the punch. Let’s start celebrating Christmas year-round—365 consecutive days of holiday joy, back-to-back, forever!

   This is the answer Santa’s most powerful elf, Shrub (George W.), is seeking. Talk about boosting the economy.

   With abnormally inflated retail sales year-round, the economy will fix itself. Shrub won’t have to abandon his other duties (building the smart-bombs, missiles and other fun toys his favorite good boy, Saddam, has been asking for).

   With holiday spending the norm, America can shift its attention to a sort of reverse holiday. We will celebrate Nihilmas, a celebration of nothing. During the Nihilmas season, there will be no holiday shopping.

   Finally, a holiday everyone can be excited about.